[Resources] Bryce resources for rendering ships

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digdug
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Dear all modders,
here you will find some resources that can be useful to beginner modders to render their ships.

An empty Bryce 5.5c studio with the Sun and camera already placed.
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=519

Load up my file, now you are ready to render a ship! (well, it's not so easy :P )

To import your ship do File - Import Object...
Bryce can import many format for meshes, DXF, 3DS, OBJ, or Lightwave meshes. You can model the ship with your favourite modeler (I use Wings3D because of its semplicity) then import it in Bryce to render.

Bryce 5.5c render engine is quite old, but at least it's free.
For a list of 3D renderer-modelers, please check here:
http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence/ ... php?t=2109


OK, so you imported your ship to Bryce, now select your ship (left click with the mouse button on the ship) then push the little A (attributes)on the top right of your mesh.
Image
Change the values to put the ship at the origin (0,0,0)
Good!
Now change the FOV (field of view) with this little button so that the ship can properly rotate in the square frame.
Image

Now you can apply textures to your ship, if you don't have placed UV mappings before.
Push the little M (materials, in the same place where you found the A for attributes) and fire up the texture editor.
Push the little triangle button there to open the texture library to choose from an already prepared texture.
Image
Starting to make a texture from a default texture is much simpler than from scratch (well, if you know how to do it, you don't need this little tutorial :) )
So, play around and make your material texture! You can save it in the library too, so you can use it later for other ships.

Brilliant ! now you have your ship textured and ready for rendering !
Now, a little undocumented feature: push CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+the little "-" button in the bottom right.
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Push yes when asked to delete all the keyframes. We just cleaned all the keyframes for animations.

Now move the keyframe slider 10 frames to the right, select your ship and push the little A then rotate the ship 90 degrees to the right (0,90,0)
Now, if you move the slider you will see your ship rotate 9 degrees for each frame !
Now move the slider 10 frames more, and rotate the ship 180 degrees, 10 frames more and rotate 270 degrees, 10 frames more and rotate the ship 351 degrees (-9 degrees).
Cool ! you just have made 40 frames !

Now do File - Document Setup...
CHange the document resolution to something Transcendence like for a ship, like 90x90 pixels or so.
Now do File - Render Animation...
Select a folder and the name for the ship, now select the little triangle button near Output module and from the menu select BMP sequence !
Push RENDER!

Congratulations !
You just get the 40 BMPs frames of a Transcendence ship !
Last edited by digdug on Thu Jan 07, 2010 11:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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digdug
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and now, we need to make the mask for the ship! :D

Select the ship, push the little M and open the material editor.
OPen the library as explained before and select from Simple&Fast category the texture "Full Black"
Close the material editor, now your ship is pitch black.

Now,, while holding the ALT, left click on the Background Hue color bar.
Image
Set the RGB colors to 255,255,255. The sky should now be white.

Now, push TAB to cycle through the objects in the rendering studio until you have selected the Sun, push DEL to delete it !

Now, render again the ship with File - Render Animation...

WOW, you just created the 40 frames of the mask!

Wait a minute! the colors are on the contrary ! :shock:
Glad you noticed, yep, fire up GIMP and Invert the colors, so that you get a white ship contour and a black background.

DONE. 8)

Have fun with your new ship! :D

--------------------------------------------------------

Comments ? please post also if you need more help to set up your ship in Bryce, I'll try at my best.
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digdug
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How to create a Transcendence-like general texture with the Bryce material editor from scratch.

So, I played around the material editor in Bryce trying to match the properties of the textures of Transcendence.

Set up the material parameters as in this screen-shot (you can play around with it later, first, let's make a general one)
Image
NOTE: The material parameters like this give a texture that is Transcendence-like when used with the "Bryce studio for ship rendering" that I uploaded on Xelerus.
http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=519

Different settings of the sun lighting and shadows gives very different results.

OK, now push first button 1 then button 2 as showed in this screenshot.
Image
Now from this window you can load up your textures and your bump maps.
If you don't have a bump map (like in my case) you can copy and paste the texture and use it as bump map (I know, I know, it's now the right way to do it, but most Transcendence ships are around 80x80 pixels, we just need some bump details to make it look good.)
Image
The result texture on the right will look transparent now, don't worry, we set up the material not to be transparent, but just to be bumped.
This is the result, on the left the texture diffusion only, and on the right the same texture as diffusion and bump map:


Close the windows, and try to push render to see the results. You should have a bumped texture on your ship.
Image
btw, the texture used is a is already included in Bryce 5.5c and it's called MetalBare0074_1_S
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